The Book by Pierre Coulibeuf stages a sort of archive with no beginning and no end. Under the pretext of retracing his 2006 outstanding retrospective, and through photos and frames from films and videos, as well as a multitude of textual interventions from the artist’s historical curators and producers, the book is an introduction to the artistic universe of Pierre Coulibeuf and offers an exploded geography to his photographical and cinematographic work. The shape of the book aims to embody two notions representing as many pillars of Coulibeuf’s work, and arising from a philosophical background deeply influenced by post-structuralism: the concept of eternal return and the structure of repetition-variation, both ruling “a world made of obscure signs, of moving and weird forms, of paths that perpetually branch off – and, on the other hand, made of contradictions, recurrences and decouplings.”

Pierre Coulibeuf (1949, Elbeuf – France) lives and works in Paris. After being awarded a doctorate in modern literature with a dissertation on P. Klossowski and L. von Sacher Masoch, he started a career as film-maker and visual artist, achieving a cinematographic body of works that owes its originality to its close relation to other artistic disciplines (i.e. visual arts, choreography, literature). Crossing cinematographic genres (fiction, documentary, experimental). Always presenting the image with different supports (35mm projection, installation, photography), he has given his simulacrum-movies the chance of inventing a place or a language closely related to other forms of art, criticizing the more established ones and questioning the ways reality has always been presented.
After 1987 Pierre Coulibeuf shot several short and long length films based on the worlds of Pierre Klossowski, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Marina Abramovic, Michel Butor, Jean-Marc Bustamante, Jan Fabre, Meg Stuart. Amongst them, we may mention Klossowski-peintre exorciste (1987-1988), L'Homme noir (1993-98), Balkan Baroque (1999), Lost Paradise, Les Guerriers de la beauté (2002), Somewhere in between (2004), Amour Neutre (2005), Magnetic Love (2088), Dédale (2009).
His films have been long exhibited as installations (films, photos and videos) in contemporary art locations, and his works are part of foremost public collections. In 2005, he was invited at the International Pavilion by the 5th International Biennial of Contemporary Art of Mercosul, Porto Alegre, Brazil. In 2006 a 35mm retrospective and installations toured several cities in Germany. In 2010 the “Dans le labyrinthe” retrospective toured the Saint-Étienne Museum of Modern Arts, the Lisbon Colecçao Berardo Museum and the Ekaterinburg Museum of Fine Arts.